Floatinghead's ramblings about music and music-related themes interspersed with various interludes and home of Cabeza de Vaca radio show on Scanner FM, Barcelona.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

P034: Cabeza de Vaca – Russian electonica and Udacha special

“You are
indebted to create good from evil, because there is no other material for it to
be created.”

Robert Penn
Warren

These are
words up on a website called Far From Moscowin which I found some of the only
reliable information on the Udacha label, the focus of our show on Cabeza de Vaca and Scanner FM this week. Deliberately obscure and
yet out in the open, spacey, dreamy and foreign, yet tangible and logical. Such
is Udacha. Their sound is certainly not what you would call a Russian
stereotype; if there was one song today looking for that claim it would be
“Morskaya” by Kompakt legends SCSI-9, with its intense stings and rainy
claustrophobic melodies. But the point of Udacha is exactly this, that it is
not a cliché, but a new way of seeing (or meeting) a country. Certainly in
Barcelona there has been a recent increase in the presence of people from the
east, and not just Russia, but Romania, Ukraine, Poland. On the way to my old
work there was a new Russian bakery and delicatessan that opened up, for
example. Why should this even be mentioned? It seems an important moment, that
after living the Cold War as a youth, and having such a one sided story, that
so long after its end, that suddenly the people, or the descendents from the
other side of that story should suddenly become real, become “available” for
communication.

In
electronic music at least there has been plenty of new stuff from the old eastern
block countries that has come to the fore. Udacha is a prime example, somehow
forging a sound in only a few short releases and more to come. Here is a couple
of recent or upcoming rleases from Russian artists and some notes on the show.

Dirty
Owl

We at
Cabeza de Vaca and Scanner FM are loving Dirty Owl and the design of the SEALT
label stuff. There was never any need to doubt vinyl as a medium, and less so
when you get such wonderful design and presentation. But the image is only one
thing and the music has to match and without having heard any of the other
releases in full, I can only speak for Dirty Owl. Excellent! A lot of
variation, technique and humour as well. Great debut and highly recommended. A
digitial version is now available as the vinyl is pretty rare already.

SEALT

Nina Kraviz

As far as
Nina and “Bubblebathgate” goes, better look for yourself at the original video
and then have a look at the comments and some of the opinion pieces. Quite an
extraordinary reaction to message boards etc that can seem more and more
apathetic. I of course am all for promoting women artists here in whatever way
they want to represent themselves. I try not to resort to positive
discrimination, but where possible I also try to consciously keep a balance of
female artists in the show. The Wire recently highlighted these kinds of issues
and mentioned a website that tries to quantify the number of women in
electronica called Female - Pressure.

One of the
most well known Russian artists Anton Zap has something new coming out soon:

If the show
had been a bit more techno based, I might have put something from Yuka on
instead of Nina Kraviz, although the story is of course an important catalyst.
As well, Yuka hasn’t had a very fresh release, but in any case, looks like an
interesting producer and DJ to keep an eye on.

Alexey
Volkov has also had some interesting techno releases on some good labels
including Semantica, and Terrence Fixmer’s Planete Rouge.

Anyone
looking for free house sounds should check out the label Chevengur Melody who are a Russian deep
hpuse netlabel with some great stuff available on their Bandcamp page. They
have just advanced into physical releases as well.